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Honestly, just take a basic normal car, and replace its engine with an electric one. No on screen entertainment, no cameras, no AI bull shit, no self driving. Just as basic as it gets.
Backup cameras are required on all 2018 or newer vehicles in the US and Canada, so you will need at least one in the back and a small screen for that, maybe hide that screen in the review.
This imaginary basic car should also come with a double-din radio so it can be upgraded like the old days.
Yes, the absolute basic required technology to make it road legal, physical switches and either physical gauges or a non-touch screen for gauges if that’s cheaper.
Physical switches > screens. It’s much harder to develop the muscle memory for a screen. I don’t have to look away from the road with switches.
The reason everything is on a touch screen now is that it’s cheaper than physical switches, as ridiculous as that seems. And yes, I greatly prefer physical switches.
Buy and wire multiple switches on every car, requiring wiring harnesses, ECM IO pins etc. or pay an intern a minimal sum once so he can put “designed Chevrolet in-dash console” on his resume. Then never update it even though it supports OTA updates and is a glitchy mess, Chevy
This is the same reason so many products come with a stupid Bluetooth app now rather than more than one button. Pay once rather than pay on every unit.
Hmm. In that case, physical buttons is the one luxury I’d pay a premium for.
Maybe something like the SEXY buttons for Teslas actually become a more common thing. Wireless buttons that you can stick almost anywhere you want and set up to control what you want.
They don’t know how to market something that doesn’t have a bunch of gimmicky bullshit.
“Get your cheap, reliable EVs here!” Done. You can pay me that $100k marketing salary whenever it’s convenient.
The problem is you can’t efficiently electrify a vehicle designed for fossil fuels. The requirements differ too much.
Actually EV conversions were common before we got intentionally designed EVs and the original Tesla roadster was built on a standard Lotus body and frame, but luckily we’re beyond that now.
You can still choose to electrify a vehicle now but you get poor performance and range, unbalanced handling, and pay way too much for a mediocre vehicle. It’s bot worth it
They mean at the design/manufacturing level, not retrofitting.
They mean just creat a simple ev car with only the needed designs to house the battery, controller and electric motor(s).
They mean discard all ideas of “futuristic” interiors, techs, or anything. Just build a modest car with an electric powerplant and battery storage. Then stop.
Fire any designer who tells you AI could improve the product.
What’s the incentive? Most people will have to buy a car anyways, so without a different incentive, it’s better for every manufacturer to sell you a 60k+ car where the margins are way higher. If profit is the sole motive it’s a no brainer.
The incentive is going to be undercutting the competition. It’s going to happen someday, might as well be you, car company.
There‘s a word for that „Greedflation.“ This is what western car makers do. Luckily, the Cinese car makers grasp their chance and disrupt the market
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China wasn’t “outcompeting us on undesirable, low productivity, jobs”. Corporations were shipping jobs to China to undercut highly productive factory jobs back then, too, so they could save on labor costs. It’s only now that China is undercutting corporate profits that these same corporations come crying and shitting their pants. That’s also why you see a ramping up of negative media pieces on China. It was never about charitably raising people out of poverty. It was always about corporations undercutting labor to gain greater profits. Fuck 'em, bring on the cheap cars.
I hate it when corpos use the “oh we can’t lower prices because our staff is getting paid too much”-narrative. What about the CEO who takes half the profits for himself?
It’s the workers who create value for a company, they don’t take it away by getting paid for their work.deleted by creator
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Yeah I’m confused by the charity argument. When have American corporations ever done anything out of the kindness of their hearts?
The “good for people” argument (which has been misportrayed here as “charity”) was made by politicians to justify tearing down the trade barriers that allowed wealthiest countries such as the US to be a higher-income bubble.
Once those trade barriers were down, all those jobs which had no other price protections than said trade barriers (jobs like, for example, assembly workers, but not things like Legal professions specialized in a country’s Law and which require registering with a local Law Society to practice) were suddenly competing with similar people all over the World, and a lot of countries in the World are full of people who would sell their work in those areas much cheaper than equivalent workers in high-income nations.
The people it was good for were people in those “open to competition” occupations in Low Income but reasonably safe countries like China (whose income went up as manufacturing moved there) and the people who owned the means of production (who got higher dividends due to the higher profits being made by paying low-income country manpower costs and receiving high-income country prices for products and services) but nobody else as even the eventual fall in prices that occurred (over the years, as all those companies with China costs started competing on price because they could thanks to the bigger profit margins due to much lower manpower costs) was not enough to make up for the faster and deeper downwards pressure on salaries in high-income countries that happenned due to said manpower competition with workers in countries with much cheaper salaries (for example, in the mid-70s about 23% of corporate revenue in American went to salaries, whilst by 2012 it was down to 7%).
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Don’t think labor costs is a big factor. Car production is the sector that is most automated. Just think of this endless bands of hanging cars with robot arms working on it. Tesla even topped this.
It’s mainly the unwillingness to design and sell cheap cars due to less profits. In Germany we had electric cars for 20k€ or even combustion cars under 15k€. But they stopped building it. Although it was sold out in weeks.
In my region there was a Startup by the Aachen University RWTH (which is an elite university in Germany) bulding small EVs for around 20k€. They simply bought all parts from suppliers and just assembled it. And engineered and designed it first. Unionized and still competitive. Unfortunately, they didn’t fly.
EV building is rather simple. The software is key. And this is the missing part at car makers capabilities.
I second your thoughts on trade war. However, I guess it will be much simpler with high taxes, high quality regulations, and may be less support by car workshops. We will see…
There is still a shit ton of people working in a car factory. Tesla had to scale back their amount of robot workers since humans could work much faster. Tesla expects to have 60,000 people working in their Gigafactory in Texas when the production of the Cybertruck ramps up.
The cyber truck is a nightmare that won’t see mass market production.Since it doesn’t have a crumple zone, I doubt it even meets US safety standards.
Chinese manufacturers are being heavily subsidised and even making a loss on their cars.
They’re trying to kill off our domestic car industries.
No reason why western countries also can’t subsidize EV car companies to remain competitive.
Like…what are we supposed to do? Be content with ridiculously priced EVs and be willing to pay a small fortune for them? Fuck off with that noise.
Western corporations have had no problems fucking over the average consumer for decades or laying off thousands of employees at the first sign of trouble. Let them adapt or die I say. Competition is always good. Western corporations have the smarts and the resources to compete, they just need to be forced to.
Controversial take: the problem isn’t car prices. They haven’t increased that much when compared to inflation, and you’re getting far more and far better cars for your money when adjusted for inflation.
The problem is wages haven’t risen and housing prices have risen too much, meaning people have less to spend on a car.
E: I googled. In the US the cost of a median house was 18k in 1953. An average car cost 3.5k.
Now, the median house costs 400k.
400k/18k x 3.5k = If car prices had risen as much as house prices, the median car would cost 77k.
Not a controversial take at all IMHO. You’re not wrong. Housing is absolutely ridiculous right now.
and you’re getting far more and far better cars for your money when adjusted for inflation.
Better at getting me from A to B?
Yes… cars now are faster, safer, and more efficient than they were in the 50s.
Even if you discount all the “features” they’ve added the bare necessities of a car are tons better than mid-20th century cars or even late 20th century cars
Well, most of it are now needlessly oversized, diminishing the better efficiency.
Or just let those who can’t compete die, which is totally fine.
I don’t have any loyalty to some specific car brand.
That‘s a terrible idea. Just because China throws irresponsible amounts of cash at cars doesn‘t mean we have to do the same mistake. We can simply say it‘s not OK to sell products under manufacturing costs to gain market share and that‘s that. Let‘s not inflate the already oversized car market even more.
I agree it’s a bad first step. I’d keep trying idea on the table, but I’d start by working with the European car manufacturers to create huge tariffs on those cars. Make it impossible for them to be sold at those prices in Western markets
They can simply say they don’t subsidize their manufacturing and operate profitably at those prices.
Just saying something doesn’t make it work unless there are legal things that back up the position. And in foreign trade, that means tariffs… which economists have been screaming about (for decades) having negative ramifications that ripple through the economy.
Selling at a loss to enter a market or gain market share is a time honored tradition at this point.
It is, but as the article mentions some manufacturers are making a loss of 35k per car.
If those cars are then sold for 5k less than the US/EU/Japanese equivalent, despite lower wages and environmental standards, you have to ask yourself questions.
Yes you just described the business model. Everyone from Walmart to Amazon to Uber uses it. They take a loss in the short term, relying on new investor money or other products.
Or they could be building economies ot scale? You can’t drive down costs making thousands, you need to make millions.
Yep. They‘re doing exactly what we usually call hostile underbidding to heavily inflate prices later when they‘re a top dog. A practice that is not quite legal in most parts of the west. And whoever wants to know when things still don‘t work out for the car maker because subsidies dry up: Search for Chinese manufacturer ‚Weltmeister‘. That will make you think thrice about ever coming near a Chinese EV.
It’s also called dumping:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)
The kind of thing usually results in a trade war, sanctions and tariffs.
The problem in Europe, is that our manufacturers are so reliant on Chinese parts and manufacturing, that they’ve asked our government NOT to intervene. China has them by the nuts, because they’ve outsourced too much. IRC they can’t even make batteries without using Chinese parts.
Good
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Sounds exactly like the rest of us
Greedflation is when you checks notes compete in a market by offering cheaper products?
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Chinese EVs are being sold at a loss of up to 35k per car:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/05/business/nio-china-electric-vehicles.html
The Chinese government is subsidising their car industry, so they can engage in dumping, and decimate our car industries. When our domestic car industries are dead, they’ll raise prices. It’s like Amazon or any other scummy megacorp that kills local businesses.
This being said, it’s hard to feel sorry for companies who also receive plenty of government subsidies and tax breaks, broke the law on emissions testing and likely killed a lot of people because of it, and refused to innovate or lower prices out of sheer greed.
China is using subsidies to accelerate the green transition, exactly like the US is doing with the “Inflation Reduction Act” and other initiatives.
Selling at a loss is how you build volume and reach the economies of scale that drive down costs.
If you fiddle around half-heartedly putting out small numbers of EVs, you’ll never come close to competing with a company that puts out over a million a year. A lot of automakers still aren’t willing to commit, and they’re whining about the position they chose to put themselves in.
I truly don’t care if China destroy the car industry, it’s fucking ridiculous how expensive some basic shit is. In my opinion if you introduce a feature into your cars, you have ten years before it should become standard.
a comment in the article you linked says this better than I ever could:
This whole narrative about alleged “subsidies” to Chinese EV makers and them “losing $35,000 per vehicle” is pure propaganda. Firstly, that company - Nio - is a relatively new one and it is still ramping up its production. A year ago when they were not selling EVs yet but invested a lot in R&D it could be said that they were losing infinite amount of money per vehicle - because infinity is what you get from dividing by zero. Both this logic and this math are erroneous. Tesla was losing money for years even after it started making and selling its cars.It kept going by taking money from investors in exchange for shares. That is exactly what the Chinese EV companies do. So secondly, those are not “subsidies” but investments, even if the money comes from Chinese government entities. This article states itself that local governments take stock in companies in exchange for investment - exactly the same thing Tesla investors did.
The article also talks about BYD, a more established manufacturer than Nio, that is making profits selling electric cars.
Hear me out: a bare minimum electronics car extremely reliable, no screens no bells and whistles and with the smallest possible engine battery that costs less than $5.000 💥
Citroën Ami is available. Closer to $8000 and technically a quadricycle. All bare minimum to make it street legal.
It’s great Citroën is making a small, cheap EV … but why did they make it look like a cross between a Fiat Multipla and a pug?
That thing is ugly.
All cheap cars are made ugly on purpose to make the expensive models more attractive to buy.
“Why is this $8,000 car so terrible,” he lamented, without a trace of irony.
That thing’s front and back are exactly the same. It saves on fabrication costs to use the same part but it gives a weird look.
Turns out there are after market mods for that. Spoiler, other front, flame paint job
You can get an electric motorcycle for that price. Even electric microcars cost more than $5000. Unless you want to buy a Chinese tin can death machine on four wheels that aren’t street legal.
I mean, it’s not like micro cars are safe
Nooooo anything but more environmentally friendly vehicles that people can actually afford. Won’t somebody think of the profits?
not sure about environmentally friendly,friendlier sure, but a well developed public transit system and biking infrastructure beats any kind of car based infrastructure
Complements. The reason we’re stuck in this auto-dystopia (are we auto-asphyxiating? ;-) is people wanting one size fits all infrastructure. Let’s apply this more intelligently this time - recognize that some areas are more built up than others and different solutions scale differently . In general that can be a good thing, but we need interconnected services for everyone. That does include cars in many areas, although I agree a worthwhile goal for cities/town centers is that people not need a car
You said the Lemmy catchphrase good job
Won’t somebody think of the profits?
This article is literally about people doing this
gee the market has been clamoring for a decade while the auto industry said “BIG TRUCKS AND SUV’S!”
I mean people also eat it up like good luttle piggies.
Yes, people being dumb is the real source of all issues.
I mean there’s still a good amount of people in my position where you can’t fit 3 car seats in any ev in the market. Haven’t checked in the past year, maybe it’s changed but I also can’t afford to waste 60k+
Or in a five-seater car or crossover. It’s ridiculous. Carseats and boosters are massive, even the ones with the smallest bases. Then after that you need space for sports equipment, musical instruments, other friends, etc. I’m not sure what the solution is here, other than acknowledging that for a few years in a family’s life they’re going to need a bigger vehicle, and it would be great if manufacturers offered a hybrid or EV solution for them, too.
Mazda is finally coming out with a PHEV three row next year, starting around $55k. Not sure who else, besides Rivian with their new fully EV three row at $75k+, which is completely unaffordable for most families.
Kia EV9 has three rows and starts at $55k still expensive but definitely in range for a middle class family
Oh, nice! I didn’t have that one on my radar. Our next family car needs to be either hybrid or EV, and I’ve just started looking.
There were two hybrid minivans on the market a couple years ago when I went shopping for one. One plug-in from Chrysler and a non-plug-in from Toyota. Both cost about as much as a Model 3.
Safety and reliability are two of the biggest factors in family cars. You would think they would want to make larger family vehicles with those selling points.
I just looked it up and the only minivan EV is 114k…
Yeah and that is part of my point on being pro-Chinese EV… Not only affordability, but the fact that there is simply no choices for certain segments. Our automakers are so conglomerated that there is very minuscule choice in EV since each puts out maybe 2 or 3 models.
There is also proof that competition is causing local builders to step up… With Citroen offering the ec3 with LFP, and 200 miles of range for $20k… Meanwhile Stelantis is releasing absolute trash in the US because they can get away with it.
You can get a Pacifica PHEV with a whole 40 miles of electric range… that is like your one choice… Though the Canoo could meet that need if it ever comes to market.
There is a similar issue for cargo vans the US has like 3 choices for electric… Meanwhile even European buyers have far more choice.
if only you did your basic research
https://babydrive.com.au/reviews/electric-cars/2022-hyundai-ioniq-5-ev/
“We can’t lower the prices, it’s impossible so soon”
Yeah but where can I get these cheap Chinese EVs? I’ve never seen any for sale in the States
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giant, 6 kWh…
No problem for people who work from home and only need to go shopping once a week.
The “giant” battery should be at least 10x bigger to call it “medium sized”.
How much for a sodium battery ?
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Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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So they CAN make cars cheaper. I bet they still post profit while claiming they’re losing money.
Somewhat unrelated: IINM most Europeans don’t drive even a quarter of the max range of EVs on most of their trips. The current range of EVs should be just fine it you plug it in every day like your phone. Getting an EV that can get you to work and back or to a friend and back without charging should already allow to buy an EV that’s quite affordable.
Most Europeans have one, max 2 cars per household. A fuckton of Europeans also go on holiday with their cars once or twice a year.
One car needs to work for most use cases. It’s fine if you have more cars than people in the house that one of them is a 100 mile range commuter, but a different kettle of fish if the same car needs to do an 800+ mile trip to the Mediterranean in summer and a 500 mile ski trip in winter.
If you see that European car makers sell the same car in China for less than half than they charge at home, you know they are basically milking us just for extra profit.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
LONDON/DETROIT, Dec 8 (Reuters) - The rise of inexpensive Chinese electric vehicles has upped the pressure on legacy automakers who have turned to suppliers, from battery materials makers to chipmakers, to squeeze out costs and develop affordable EVs quicker than previously planned.
“Automakers are really now only turning to affordable vehicles, knowing they’ve got to or they will lose out to Chinese manufacturers,” said Andy Palmer, chairman of UK startup Brill Power, which has developed hardware and software to boost EV battery management system performance.
Palmer, formerly Aston Martin’s CEO, said Brill Power’s products could boost EV range by 60% and enable smaller batteries.
Stellantis (STLAM.MI) is building a European plant with China’s CATL (300750.SZ) to make cheaper LFP batteries and recently unveiled the Citroen electric e-C3 SUV, which starts at 23,300 euros ($24,540).
Vincent Pluvinage, CEO of Palo Alto, California-based OneD Battery Sciences, said that on his recent visits with European automaker customers, every meeting started with the same refrain: “‘Reducing costs is now more important than anything else.’”
Veekim CEO Peter Siegle said using cheaper ferrite and low-cost processes - including 3D-printed copper wiring - can cut an EV motor’s price by 20%.
The original article contains 809 words, the summary contains 195 words. Saved 76%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
My God the Chinese are at it again beating the United States at capitalism
It’s not on, it really isn’t, the Chinese shouldn’t be allowed to engage in the free market. They’re supposed to be the enemy.
They should be sanctioned so that Western car makers can continue to put out vehicles for ludicrous prices, the way God intends.
I know someone is going to read that and not get the implied /s
I don’t know, I feel like it works on both levels really. There are actual people that think like that and it’s insane. The US trade war doesn’t really help, It paints China as the bad guy even though they’re only doing the same thing as every other country in the world.
By all means demand China improves in areas which makes sense such as blatant copyright violation and human rights abuses but not this. Making cheap cars is hardly nefarious.
It depends on how it’s done. If the Chinese government is directly subsidizing the cheap cars then it’s a problem.
Kind of like the US subsidizing farmers and then dumping the cheap corn on other countries such that their local farmers go out of business.
That’s capitalism. You don’t get to complain because someone else gets a better deal.
China will always be able to produce cheaper products because the cost of living is lower there. But that is hardly a major revelation.
You forgot the uyghurs and slave labour…
Convenient.Well the US has 1.2 million prisoners who get paid on average 86 cents a day. So effectively slave labor. That they aren’t directly building cars doesn’t matter because money is fungible. Every dollar saved not paying prisoners is more money elsewhere in the economy.
Yes I did, I mentioned human rights abusers, it’s right there in the comment that I made, I can still see it.
I find it’s always a good idea to actually read the comments before getting angry about them.
… the same ‘cheap chinese evs’ that keep spontaneously combusting all over china?
Wow. Can’t wait…
